Little Silhouetto
by Thessaly
Summary: Directly after Wembley.  Scara, of couse.  Damn that boy.  He was a hell of a lot easier to pick on when he wasn’t quite so selfconfident.  In the middle of the crowd, Scara picks out a familiar gray suit.  What the hell...?  Moderate language.


Fear me, you lords and petty councillors... I'm exorcising the last of the Gazz/Scara plot bunnies. I figure since I've finally left England (boo-hoo) and am back home - the weather _sucks_ - this is one way to pay tribute to a wonderful country who has been a super host to me all year...especially the bit of it in the West End of London. Heh. This one was harder because Ben Elton didn't write all my dialogue, but I'm still happy with it, and I hope you are.

In terms of disclaimers, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and Ben Elton own the concept and the music...I own part shares in Gazz and Scara. And no, I am NOT trying to create a Khashoggi/Meat ship, although it might be interesting. I just thought they both needed to chat. We good? Excellent. Read on - then again, incidentally, if you're that way inclined...

"_And we'll keep on fighting, to the end._" Wembley. My good God. An undiscovered side of Gazz: if you give him a microphone, he lights up. You can't take your eyes off him. No, I lied. I could, if I really wanted to. And I did, once or twice, mostly when the missing Bohemians started filing in again. No use asking where they learned the words – that's a definite Don't Go There zone. On the other hand, in terms of the Mighty Queen, these words are pretty easy to pick up, especially after the second refrain. You can just imagine all those people, the _audience_, swaying in rhythm, with all that energy focused on one thing: you...it's a kind of magic. God, I'm as bad as Gazz. Sorry. I was sort of counting in the back of my head – are they all there? Cliff Richard, yes, trailing gauze and alcohol fumes. Aretha; I swear, nothing would ever touch that woman's hair. Charlotte; how does she get that leather on anyway, paint it? Big Macca; he's hard to miss. Meat, head high and outwardly the same, but she didn't move the same way. The first time we met her, it was like she had springs in her legs. Bowie, thinner than before. Prince, much hairier than before. It looked like we had them all back. They were followed by a whole crowd I didn't recognize. Including one gray suit that looked really familiar. What the hell...?

"_We are the champions of the world_. Yeah!" I suppose it was a bit much to expect a chord like that, with so many people singing, to hold for very long before exploding into cheers and yells. Gazz, in the centre of the half-circle crowd, was standing with his legs apart, one fist up in the air triumphantly, the other pulled back. He looked happy; he looked like a rocker. He looked rediculous. I sighed. "How old are you, Gazz?"

His concentration broke, and he looked at me with a half-glare over an attempt to smile. One of his more endearing expressions. "Thanks, Scara. Ruin the best moment of my life, why don't you?"

"If that was the best moment of your life, I am _seriously_ worried."

"Hell, it's the best moment of _my_ life," said Charlotte, who had slunk up behind me. That girl never walks. Ever. She eyed Gazz. "But you could make it better, Galileo."

Gazz stuck his tongue out at me. "See, _she_ calls me Galileo."

"Yeah, well that's because she, uh, likes you." When 'likes you' means 'wants to shag you', then yes.

"Your point...?"

Charlotte laughed and I glared at her too. "My point," I said, grandly. "My point is that," Charlotte and Gazz looked at me. "Is that - " Someone put his arms around my waist.

"I knew I recognized those legs," he said.

"My point is that I have no idea what the fuck I was going to say. _Get off_," I added to Big Macca, who was taking advantage of his positioning to entertain himself. It wasn't really entertaining me. Charlotte stretched. I swear her leather creaked.

Gazz lifted both eyebrows in a way he probably thought made him look really cool. It just made him look confused. "So that's like saying you don't like me?" His chin tilted, challenging.

"Don't push it," I said. "Stupid questions get stupid answers."

"I think - "

"Oh, do you? Could have fooled me."

"Shuttup, Scara." Gazz dived, grabbed me in a big bear-hug and kissed me thoroughly. Somebody whistled. Somebody else started clapping. Definitely not cool. Well, I mean the spectator bit; I never have problems with Gazz kissing me.

We stopped. Eventually. "Ok, let me rephrase that...I don't have to be nice to you because you like the fact that I drive you absolutely crazy."

"Her name is Daisy and she drives me crazy, and she knows how to love me, yes indeed..." Gazz trailed off and rolled his eyes. I was beginning to recognize that sheepish frustrated look. He usually got that when he was quoting stuff he didn't recognize. "Whatever," he added. "Scara! You're making me miss my own party!"

"If you want to call it a party..." Cliff Richard, who looked like he was still pissed from the Seven Seas of Rhye interlude, drifted by. I snagged one of his bottles. "Cheers, Gazza."

"Hey." He looked faintly annoyed. "What about me?"

"Find your own, mate." Gazz punched my shoulder as he went by. "Right, and how old did we decide you were, then?"

"Look, Scara, it might be news to you, but the Angry Chick attitude does not automatically make you mature."

"Gazz, stop with the chick thing! Gazz..."

He pulled the bottle from my hand and chucked me under the chin. "Quality comeback...chick."

"Fuck you too, Mr. I'm-a-cool-rock-star."

"You wish." He disappeared into a crowd of half-drunk Bohemians. Damn that boy. He was a hell of a lot easier to pick on when he wasn't quite so self-confident. And he took my beer. I went in search of some more.

The crowd was massive. I mean, where did all these people _come_ from? There definitely weren't this many Bohemians at the Heartbreak when I was there. But there were obviously enough of the original lot that it didn't stay quiet for very long. Someone had started some kind of beat, and then someone else joined in with another beat that was sort of a tune. And then, of course, we all started dancing. All that adrenoline. I don't know if you can actually live on party fumes for longer than, like, a few days, but we were obviously going to try. Big Macca spun me around, laughing.

He wheezed beer fumes in my face. "Hey, come on...dance, Scara."

"Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?" Yeah, real witty, whoever you are. I could see a long tunnel of parties ahead of me, and they would all involve someone yelling that at me.

"Uh-uh. Only funny the first time," I yelled back into the crowd. But I danced anyway; I figured Big Macca was still sober enough not to drop me. Well, I hoped anyway.

What did worry me was Meat. Oh, I mean, to look at she was just like the other Bohemians. A few more scrapes, some more bruises, circles under the eyes, and a _lot_ more dirt. They'd all come through recognizable. And Meat still looked like Meat. The problem was sort of internal; first time I was at the Heartbreak, I don't think she ever stopped moving. Always jumping or running, and when she wasn't actually in the air, she walked with a sort of bounce. Normally she'd have been right in the middle of this sweating, dancing crowd doing something really mad...with Brit, of course. It was really like half of her had gone, or something. God, how scary, to lose that sense of support. I didn't even want to think about it. "Oi, Bob," I said, pushing away from the centre of the crowd towards a glimmer of purple nearer the edge.

He looked over, trying to find the source of the voice, then saw me. "Hi, Scaramouche," he said.

I liked Bob, solid, reliable, dependable Bob. "What's the deal with Meat?" I asked.

"You noticed," he said. "She's been like that ever since we got arrested."

"Yeah?" I had some kind of memory of her screaming at Khashoggi.

"Well, there was this one moment where she kinda jumped off her chair and started swearing at the Commander," said Bob. "But then she just lost it. Went all – funny like that. She's not sleeping. She hasn't even cried," he added. "Madonna and Aretha cried whenever anyone got taken away, but her, she just - " He looked embarrassed. "Just really calm but, you know, in a tense way. Big Macca figured she needed to get plastered, but she wouldn't. She just watches the dancing. You know."

I looked over at Meat, who was talking to Gazz. She looked young and vulnerable when she was at rest, which was also weird. I'd thought of Meat as like the ultimate Bohemian: all leather and fishnets and freedom, but there was also this tremendous emotional dependence on Brit, I guess. Those two belonged together, and Meat without Brit was wrong somehow. I wondered what you did for someone like that; death isn't really my specialty. "Thanks, Bob," I said. "Where do I find the beer?"

It took a few minutes of pushing and yelling and slapping groping hands to find the beer crates. I don't know where _they_ got them from, but when it's Big Macca and alcohol, I really just don't ask. I flipped open my beer cap, turned around, and came face to face with the grey suit. Shit. The last person I expected to see here, or anywhere. _But surely you know the company loves you_. I swallowed. That gray suit figured in most of my scariest memories, but he didn't have to know that. "Hello, pervert."

"I beg – You look somewhat familiar," he said.

"Guess you don't have a very good memory for the faces of the _people you torture_." I glared at him. He glared back, then swayed, worryingly. He had the emaciated look of someone who had lost a lot of weight in a very short time, and the gray suit was stained and filthy. One eye was still purple and it looked like his wrist had been broken and left to heal by itself. "You look like the living dead. What the hell happened to you?"

"What does it look like?" said presumably Ex-Commander Khashoggi wearily. "I had my mind blown."

But he was the Commander of the Secret Police... "What? Really?"

"Yes, really." Ouch, wounded to the heart. Like a little sarcasm is really going to take me out. Yeah, _right_.

"Why?"

His eyes glazed over for a moment, and I really thought he might pass out. "The Dreamer and his Bad-Ass Babe...they're not lost, we just don't know where they are..."

I had a distinct memory of removing those tranceivers. "So, what, you screw up once and she sends you down with the prisoners?"

"Correct," he said.

Um. I wasn't exactly sure what to say. The bad guy had ended up with the good guys in the end. Did that mean I had to be nice to him now? Did that mean he had to stop terrifying everybody. I studied his puffy, purple face. He studied me back, equally bad-temperedly. Apparently not. That helped. "Doesn't having your mind blown mean they wipe your memory?"

"Correct," he said again.

"Then how do you know who we are?" I asked him suspiciously.

"Those machines have never been perfect," he said. "There is a significant margin of error, especially on the ... strong-minded."

"Such as yourself."

"But of course." Bastard. "Neither were they designed to deal with - "

"The power of living rock?" I suggested, sweetly. Gazz would have been running the other way if I used that tone on him. The Ex-Commander raised one gray eyebrow and swayed again, and I was grudgingly impressed. Bloody frighting and bossy to be sure, but he had style.

"Sit down before you fall over," said Gazz from behind me, and pushed a box over. Where had he come from? "What are you doing here, then?"

Khashoggi sat down. Gazz remained standing, looking down on him with a surprisingly mature expression. "I was in prison," he said shortly. "And then I wasn't. I just followed the crowds. To," he looked around scathingly, "the Place of Champions."

"Right," I said. "Now what? You can't exactly go around spying for anybody; I'd say you're out of a job."

Gazz glanced over at me. "Chill," he said. "She's got a point; what _do _you want to do?"

"I don't know," he said distinctly. And despite being such a mess, he still looked calm. How did he do that? But then I guess being that near Killer Queen for that long does funny stuff to you. I mean, I saw her for about five minutes and I was pretty scared.

He and Gazz just looked at each other. "Ok," said Gazz. "But I'm not the only person here who knows you." What? Did I just miss something? Oh, God, no...he wasn't going to –

Khashoggi nodded. Gazz waved at somebody through the crowd, and a moment later, it parted to show Meat Loaf, beer in one hand and a slightly quizzical expression. "What's chilling, Dreamer?" She winced as she said it, and I remembered Brit used to call Gazz Dreamer.

"Um," said Gazz. "I wanted - " He rubbed his nose, and gestured awkwardly at Khashoggi, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head rested in his hands.

Meat blinked. "What the _fuck_ is he doing here?" A bit of light sparked in her eyes. "Galileo, what – That is Commander Khashoggi."

"_Ex_-Commander," said Khashoggi, lifting his head of his hands. "I - " He stopped, staring at Meat. His eyebrows dived together. "You." I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement. "I remember you."

Meat's chin set, hard. "Likewise, pig." She did a few dance steps. "I'll take you to the Seven Seas of Rhye." With a slosh, she tossed her remaining beer over his head and shoulders. "Bastard."

"No, I mean after," said Khashoggi, wiping the beer off his face. How the hell, I wondered, did he stay so calm? I'd be attacking someone who dumped beer on me. "You were next to me," he said, carefully. He seemed to be feeling his way, tentatively, through painful things he only partially remembered. "They put me in my cell, and all night I could hear you...singing. _Save, save, save me: can't face this life alone._"

Meat swallowed. "Yeah?" she said, her voice barely audible.

"I was surprised," said the Commander. "I kept hearing it, all night, and into the day. All the time, this little voice near me, singing. Anything. Everything. I remember thinking, hell, she shouldn't be able to sing at all, let alone after the treatment."

"The _treatment_? That's what you call it?" Meat broke in, the thread of anger back in her voice. "Like it's some kind of medical procedure? What kind of sick bastard are you anyway?" She was crying now, and barely seemed to notice it. "People like you shouldn't have that kind of power."

"What kind of power?" His voice was taught, and I realized that he was under a heavy emotional strain too.

"Destruction," said Meat, the mascara running down her face with her tears. The light I'd seen in her eyes grew, and you could hear the catches in her breath, deep gasps of pain and loss and misery. Then, quite simply, she snapped. Meat dived forward, onto the ex-Chief of Secret Police, screaming, sobbing, punching, biting. "He said he'd always come back for me, all the time, every time he went out, and he didn't, and it's all your fault, and I hate you, and your stupid goons, and your _treatment_, and your attitude, it's like you think you're so much better than everybody else because they pay you to track us down just because we're different, and why is that bad anyway, to be different and to want to live and to have fun and to be in love, why is that so bad so fuck you, fuck the universe, fuck life it's not fair, because he's not here anymore and he's never going to come back ever and it's all your fault." She hadn't been sleeping, Bob said, and now she collapsed onto Khashoggi, crying like her heart would break. It probably had already. "It's all your fault," she said again, muffled into his shoulder.

Khashoggi sat very still during the attack and then he slowly reached up and put his hands around her shoulders, holding her. His eyes were closed, but I could see silent tears running down his battered face. One of the scrapes on his face had opened again and the dark blood trickled down his cheek like Meat's mascara.

Gazz, behind me, closed his arms around my waist. "Let's leave them alone for a bit," he said. We left, quietly.

"Hey, Gazz," I said as we walked into the stadium evening. The party was still as crazy as before, but neither of us really wanted to go back right now.

"What?"

"How did you know, I mean, to do that?"

Gazz shrugged. "Dunno. It just seemed right. They both needed to share that."

He really had an intuitive brain. All about feelings and acting on guesses. Not like me at all: I wouldn't have thought of that. "Clever," I said.

Gazz stopped abruptly. "Hang on," he said. "Say that again?"

"I said, 'clever'. You know, clever to think that up."

Gazz punched the air again. "Yes! That's what I thought. Just tell me again – you think I'm clever?"

"No, Gazz, I do not. I just think you had one clever idea."

"Oh, you _so_ said I was clever." He picked me up. I hate being short. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

"Gazz, put me_ down_!"

"Why?" He carried me towards the crowd, and on the outskirts, lowered me to the ground. "Ooof...Fat bottomed girl, you make the rocking world go round."

"What!" I pushed him. "Watch it, mate. You picked me up, remember?"

He pushed me back. "Not my fault you're built like a tank."

"I am _not_ built like a tank!" I marched away into the crowd. God. That _boy_. What was his problem? First it was, oh, no, Scara, you can't help me save the world because you're a girl, and now it was, oh, Scara, you're a cow. Jerk. I grabbed the nearest Bohemian - Prince. "Dance with me." He did. Prince was always pretty good at following orders.

"_She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, and with a love like that, you know you should be glad_." Gazz was singing, somewhere. I had no idea what, but frankly, I didn't care. OK, I'm lying again...I did care. I love his voice. I love listening to him sing, I love watching him sing, I love being _near_ him when he's singing. I guess that's what they call stage presence; whatever the old rockers had that made people watch them. It's magnetic; a kind of magic (yeah, I know, I said that already). I pushed through the crowd, now much diminished, towards the sound, and waited at the edge of the circle, just watching, all frustration, all jokes aside. He finished the song and, laughing, rejoined the crowd. I could see him, dancing with Charlotte. Not cool. Definitely not cool. Well, fine, if that was how he wanted it. He could go hook up with that slut if he liked. And if all that leather turns him on, I'm not interested anyway. It's a bit...kinky.

The crowd was very thinned out by now. People had been leaving, mostly in twos, for a while now. I waved the Bob and Prince across the grass and they waved back. In one corner of the field, just in the circle cast by one of the huge lights that one of the Bohemians had gotten running, stood two figures, almost in silhouette, quiet and comforting, the man noticeably taller than the woman. Their arms were around each other's shoulders and their foreheads rested together as though sharing secrets. Meat and Khashoggi...of all the odd mixes, that was decidedly the most odd one. But they needed it – you could see it in the posture. I shook my head. Weird.

"Um, Scara," said Gazz.

"Shit! Stop creeping up on me, Gazz. You'll give me a heart attack!"

"Oh good, I'll do it more often. Might be one way to shut you up."

"Thanks for the warning." I glared at him. He glared back at me.

"Shouldn't you - "

"Aren't you - " We said at the same time.

"Err," said Gazz. "Sorry. You first."

"No, you. You started first."

"Nope, Ladies first." I glared at him even harder. He held up both hands in defense. "Ok, ok. I wanted to apologize for saying you're built like a tank."

"Thank you," I answered icily.

"...even though it might be true, I shouldn't have said it."

"Shut it, Gazz!" I swatted at him, and he ducked, grinning.

"Aren't you supposed to be with Big Macca somewhere?"

"Shouldn't you be getting Charlotte out of her bondage gear?" We looked at each other.

"What?" said Gazz, blankly. "Bondage gear?"

"I'll tell you when you're older."

"And why would I be getting Charlotte out - " He stopped and began, slowly, to turn red. The penny dropped. "Oh. Um, no. Not exactly. She's over there with, um, Madonna, and um, a couple of other, um, girls."

I registered what he had said first. "Wait a minute Gazz... _Big Macca_? Are you joking? _God_. I might catch something."

We stared at each other for another moment, half angry. Gazz started laughing. I joined him, and somehow, I was leaning against him, and one of his arms slid around my shoulders. All the stress and left over hype came out, and we leaned together, laughing hysterically for no reason; just glad to be finished, and alive, with a warm body next to us who was also laughing. We hadn't really had a chance to, you know, talk since - a long time. I mean, we'd had our huge fight, and then I'd "taken him back" but I didn't really know how far that was supposed to go, and then there was the whole Charlotte thing...

"Right then," said Gazz, eventually getting a grip. "Do you think - since you're alone and I'm alone, maybe we can, um, you know..."

I looked up at his triangular face with the square block of fringe hanging in his eyes and the trust that hid there behind the laughter. I couldn't get away from this relationship...not that I was trying very hard, or anything. "Give this thing another go?" I suggested.

"Yeah," said Gazz. I kissed him. I figured he'd say a whole lot more before he got around to it, and I figured we'd better get things going before we started squabbling again. A phrase of music drifted into my head, unexpectedly right. _I kinda like it, crazy little thing called love_.


End file.
